Welcome! Sky Diary’s new home is here on my official site, ChrisKridler.com (the main menu is above in case you’re looking for the Chris Kridler home page, author services, books and more). I started chasing storms in 1997 and soon after that developed a website, first on America Online and then on the web. After building Sky Diary for more than twenty years in HTML, it became a bit creaky. I’m capturing the best of SkyDiary.com and transferring it to this site for a more reader-friendly experience. See the latest chase reports here on the blog and in the new index of storm chasing reports from recent years (continually updated as I add more of the archives). Stay tuned for updates.
Alethea and Chris pose in front of a supercell at Colby, Kansas, in 2021. Photo by William T. Hark, HarkPhoto.com.
Cow is our loyal companion on the road.
Alethea Kontis and I went to Tornado Alley in late May and saw many fantastic storms. I’ve only just started to post images in the blog. You can see all the storm chasing posts from previous years in the blog (with the exception of some very old posts I’m still moving to this site as time allows). You can read about our adventures here and on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube (please subscribe!).
When I saw a big line of storms approaching the east coast of Florida with lots of lightning on June 19, I figured I could get into position to photograph it. But Act I of the chase was disappointing. I parked at the St. Johns River west of Cocoa and photographed the line coming in. Just about all the lightning was in the clouds. …
It took a while for Alethea Kontis and I to “pull the trigger” on this year’s storm-chasing trip. That’s what my chaser friends who don’t live in Tornado Alley say when they’re planning to hit the road. For most of us, with jobs and families and other things that keep us busy, we can’t do a lot of spur-of-the-moment thousand-mile trips. It’s better …
It’s been almost a year since the May 23, 2022, chase in Texas that was both awesome and maddening. Alethea Kontis and I were on the storm of the day from the moment it was a piddly shower. But the wrong move put us on the wrong side of a wall of dust that obscured a massive, violent tornado. This is the one …
SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center at twilight on April 30, 2023, with the ViaSat 3 internet satellite and two other payloads. I went to Cocoa Village to try to get a shot. It was about a half hour after sunset, and I could have tried a streak shot but worried it wouldn’t be quite dark enough for the …
This is the third day out of four that I ended up storm chasing. Today’s chase was even more spontaneous than Thursday’s, as I’d been at an event for most of the afternoon and visibility was terrible today. But then, in spite of the murk, I saw the cool structure on this severe storm and couldn’t resist. Besides, the hail core looked decent, …
Severe storms two days in a row. With hail. And tornado warnings. In Florida? And I got to chase them both. It’s been a weird week for us here in east-central Florida and the Space Coast, but the weather reflects the overall weather pattern, with the southern branch of the jet stream enhancing our chances of severe storms. On Wednesday, April 26, Alethea …
After the epic 25+ inches of rain in two days and flooding in Fort Lauderdale this week, you’d think we’d all be swimming in rain in Florida. But our place on the Space Coast is still dry. Just a few showers are only teasing the plants rather than making them truly happy. I like to have a lush tropical garden. Yes, …
